Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Quick and Easy Sign Up!

It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.

Sign Up Browse

Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

  • Download on iOS
  • Download on Android
  • Download on iOS

The Maids

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
3.50/5 (225 ratings)
Read Now Download Now
The Maids is a jewel: an astonishing complement to The Makioka Sisters, set in the same house, in the same turbulent decades, but among the servants as much as the masters. The Maids concerns all the young women who work—before, during, and after WWII—in the pampered, elegant household of the famous author Chikura Raikichi, his wife Sanko, and her younger sister. Though quite well-to-do, Raikichi has a small house: the family and the maids (usually a few, sharing a little room next to the kitchen) are on top of one another. This proximity helps to explain Raikichi’s extremely close observation of the maids and their daily lives, although his interest carries with it more than a dash of the erotic, calling to mind Tanizaki’s raciest books such as Diary of a Mad Old Man and The Key.

In the sensualist, semi-innocent, sexist patrician Raikichi, Tanizaki offers a richly ironic self-portrait, but he presents as well a moving, nuanced chronicle of change and loss: centuries-old values and manners are vanishing, and here—in the evanescent beauty of the small gestures and intricacies of private life—we find a whole world to be mourned.  And yet, there is such vivacity and such beauty of writing that Tanizaki creates an intensely compelling epic in a kitchen full of lively girls.


Ethereally suggestive, sensational yet serious, witty but psychologically complex, The Maids is in many ways The Makioka Sisters revisited in a lighter, more comic mode.
Format:
Pages:
176 pages
Publication:
Publisher:
Edition:
First Edition
Language:
eng
ISBN10:
0811224929
ISBN13:
9780811224925
kindle Asin:
0811224929

The Maids

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
3.50/5 (225 ratings)
Read Download
The Maids is a jewel: an astonishing complement to The Makioka Sisters, set in the same house, in the same turbulent decades, but among the servants as much as the masters. The Maids concerns all the young women who work—before, during, and after WWII—in the pampered, elegant household of the famous author Chikura Raikichi, his wife Sanko, and her younger sister. Though quite well-to-do, Raikichi has a small house: the family and the maids (usually a few, sharing a little room next to the kitchen) are on top of one another. This proximity helps to explain Raikichi’s extremely close observation of the maids and their daily lives, although his interest carries with it more than a dash of the erotic, calling to mind Tanizaki’s raciest books such as Diary of a Mad Old Man and The Key.

In the sensualist, semi-innocent, sexist patrician Raikichi, Tanizaki offers a richly ironic self-portrait, but he presents as well a moving, nuanced chronicle of change and loss: centuries-old values and manners are vanishing, and here—in the evanescent beauty of the small gestures and intricacies of private life—we find a whole world to be mourned.  And yet, there is such vivacity and such beauty of writing that Tanizaki creates an intensely compelling epic in a kitchen full of lively girls.


Ethereally suggestive, sensational yet serious, witty but psychologically complex, The Maids is in many ways The Makioka Sisters revisited in a lighter, more comic mode.
Format:
Pages:
176 pages
Publication:
Publisher:
Edition:
First Edition
Language:
eng
ISBN10:
0811224929
ISBN13:
9780811224925
kindle Asin:
0811224929

More Books

The Living Statue: A Legend

Günter Grass

Om udregning af rumfang II

Solvej Balle

On the Calculation of Volume I

Solvej Balle

The Little Sparrow Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #6)

Seishi Yokomizo

Death on Gokumon Island (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #4)

Seishi Yokomizo

Herscht 07769

László Krasznahorkai

Casa de furia

Evelio Rosero

The Village of Eight Graves (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #3)

Seishi Yokomizo

Goodnight Tokyo

Atsuhiro Yoshida

The Inugami Curse (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #2)

Seishi Yokomizo

Held

Anne Michaels

Grotesque

Natsuo Kirino